Seasonal

New birds flit in their feather helmets.

Take their powdery beaks to the lilies,

petals pursed, purpled and molded before

they opened. Bare structure of branches

an audible, vegetal overtaking and

diegetic sounds we recognize as

punching heartbeat, crackling tremolo of the old

time record player, giving the worlds

continuity they’d otherwise lack.

With time-lapse equipment,

can we detail the day it started?

Had we access to everything: the stinking

pine barrens, the swelling sound

of cicadas, the white blossoms floating

down on currents of air like thick

snowflakes in spring, the strange orange

moon suspended up there, divided

in half, half shielded by darkness.

Out of the astral discharge we call

ardor, it gets warmer and

with our book of record

highs, we track the weather

as it happens. With our tattered

taxonomic manual, we learn how

to dig a hole without getting

dirty. I started out because

everything was happening at once.

Everything happens at once.

—Shannon Welch

Shannon Welch's poems have appear in Conduit, Tin House, Volt, and elsewhere.

Originally published in the April/May 2004 issue of Boston Review.